performance, fruit, collage, community organizing
August 10 – August 20, 2022

to carry within us an orchard
E19: Artistic Interventions
Transformer Gallery
Washington, D.C.

to carry within us an orchard was developed during my time as part of Transformer’s 19th year of their Exercises for Emerging Artists program. 

what is the first taste you can remember?

to carry within us an orchard, a line from Li Young Lee’s From Blossoms, is a poem that celebrates community at every point of connection. As a first generation American with immigrant parents – in all the language and cultural divides that separated us – this exhibition explores the embodied gestures and rituals of care that fill the silences between us. I brought cut fruit to Transformer as an intervention in this country’s landscape of care as a commodity. 

The exhibition included the artist daily returning to the gallery to cut fruit for vistors; a cut fruit circle+community organizing workshop for AAPI femme artists based in the DC metro area; and a collage series that included photo submissions from the public, the artist’s family archive, and found historical images. I invited my mother to collaborate by cutting fruit for the workshop and commissioning a flag, as a gesture to reclaim the memory of her sewing garden flags to support us as children – a skill passed down from her mother.

You can learn more about the exhibition at transformerdc.org/e19

Photos by Mariah Miranda

©2024
Adele Yiseol Kenworthy